Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Uncovering Roots

I don't know if y'all know this, but therapy is so. freaking. cathartic.

I know, it probably doesn't seem like a stretch to think that someone who likes to talk as much as I do would enjoy having the chance to talk to someone whose entire job is to listen to me. But seriously, every single week with Yvonne, I've uncovered answers about how things in my past are still cropping up, why my self-esteem is still as screwed up as it is when I have so many incredible people who love me like they do, why certain situations may have triggered my seizures that I never saw as possibly being responsible before now, and on and on.

It's amazing. And relieving. My brain doesn't make much sense to me anymore, for a myriad of reasons. So to have someone who is unbiased sit across from me and point out explanations for things that suddenly make sense once I hear them, it makes me feel like maybe I'm not as crazy as I sometimes feel. Or maybe my insanity is just being validated. Who knows. ;)

I'm beginning to understand why I still feel the need to impress certain people, even when the logical part of my brain knows that they are not the kind of people that I need to impress. Because I still care very much, way more than I need to, about what my friends think of me. And there's this almost constant gnawing fear in my gut that I'm going to mess everything up. Because as much as it infuriates me, everything I heard growing up still has a death grip on my self-esteem, even though I know now that none of it was true and that my friends really do fiercely love me.

I've also begun to find peace with Ryann suddenly cutting me out of her life. (Yeah, that's the friend I lost. I don't know why I was keeping it a secret.) She never told me anything was wrong - in fact she did just the opposite - so her decision to leave is on her. I didn't do anything wrong. And I'm sure as heck not a mind reader, so I can't know that something was wrong unless she told me. Which she didn't. So I need to get the thought out of my head that I could have stopped this or changed it or that it was my fault. Because if there's one thing I know in this situation, it's that I was a good friend to her. I stood by her and supported her no matter what. And sometimes I'm not always going to get the answers that I want, so I just have to accept that she made her choices and focus on the people who won't do what she did.

I understand not only why the Reformation boys scared me so badly in the beginning, and more importantly, how that probably triggered the start of my seizures two years ago. And how that anxiety can still be seen in my relationships with Clayton and Austin today. That could probably be an entire blog post in itself, so I'll just leave it there for now.

It's kind of freaky when a stranger seems to know more about your brain than you do. But it can also make things a lot easier.

There's a lot of stuff I'm still afraid of. Some things I didn't even realize I was still afraid of. People I didn't realize I was so scared of losing. But now I'm starting to uncover some of the roots of these fears, and it feels so freeing.

I guess it's fitting that this is the year my One Word is FEARLESS.

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